When I talk with people about cooking or my blog, they most often comment about my kids. “That’s so great that your kids are helping in the kitchen. Mine would never help out.” Or “I wish I could get my kid in the kitchen but I really like to keep my kitchen clean as I work.” Or “My kid only eats dino nuggets so I guess I’ll start cooking again once he goes to college.” Or “I’ll definitely have my daughter help cook when she’s older.” It goes without saying if you read this blog regularly that my kids are often in the kitchen. Not just my teens, but my four year-olds help out all the time. They’ve been in the kitchen now for at least two years. They are becoming pro. You’ve seen the photos. You’ve heard the rants. Get those kids in the kitchen.

After talking with a friend yesterday about her experience with parents who seem to fear cooking, I started to think about the parents I meet who are cooking, but not with their kids. Some are afraid of the mess. I’ll give you that one. Some feel so overwhelmed, it is just easier to get the cooking done themselves. I feel that one too. Don’t think that I haven’t turned on PBS kids so that I can get through dinner prep. Some feel their kids are too young to be in the kitchen. It can be a lot of work to find jobs that are age appropriate for your kids while you are trying to get dinner on the table. Let me help you out with that. Here are some things that most kids can do that provide a great introduction to your kitchen:

1.Washing vegetables. Pull that stool up to the sink, get out a colander, and let ‘er rip. Your kid will get wet and your veggies might not be as clean as you would like. That’s ok. Your kid can change while you do the next steps and you can always rewash the veggies. Washing vegetables introduces kids to the vegetable itself. It gives them ownership over that part of the process, which tends to make kids more willing to eat that vegetable. Sometimes when they are washing the vegetables, they will sneak a bite. Snacking before dinner? Not the best idea in general, but I’m totally ok with this if they are snacking on vegetables.

2.Mashing or stirring. Guacamole, bananas for bread, potatoes (not in a hot pot). Mashing any of these things are excellent jobs for little kids. The kids get a little dose of eye hand coordination and you get a helper. This past Sunday night, Gus helped make guacamole for enchiladas. Gus is hit or miss on eating guacamole, but he went crazy eating it on Sunday and he advised all of his siblings that they should thank him for the guacamole because he made it. “Isn’t it so good?” he asked each one of them.

3.Measuring. This is a tough one for you neatniks and for baking because kids will never be as precise as you need them to be with measuring. Having kids get out the right measuring cup or spoon is a great place to start. I ask my little kids to find the “one over four” cup or the “one over three” cup when I don’t want them actually measuring. This helps with number recognition in young kids and with understanding fractions in older elementary kids. Once our older kids were learning about fractions, we would have them double or halve recipes before measuring so that they could practice math skills. You can always have your kids dump the ingredients that you’ve measured into the bowl. And, of course, they can stir.

4.Getting out ingredients. This is a great way for kids to learn what is in their food and where it is in your kitchen. They can also help put things away. Baby steps in the process.

5.Cutting and prepping. No, you are not going to hand your three year old a paring knife. But you can hand her the broccoli or cauliflower to break into pieces. Little hands can also tear lettuce and break the ends off of beans or asparagus or grind spices. Once your kids are older and you are comfortable with them handling a knife, it is a great idea to get that knife in their hands on a regular basis and teach them proper knife skills. Not sure about your own knife skills? Check out the Kitchn’s Cooking School for an awesome quick refresher.

6.Operating the food processor, blender, or stand mixer. Warning! Warning! Sharp blades! Heavy mechanical tools! I totally hear you. All true. But supervised, even little kids can help make salad dressing in the blender or chop onions in the food processor. My kids fight over who gets to pulse the blender when we make smoothies or who gets to turn the food processor on to make hummus. They’ve grated zucchini and carrots in the food processor, made pesto, blended cookie dough…and – I’m beating a dead horse here – they EAT the things that they have pulsed or mixed in those fun tools with buttons. Imagine a four year old liking arugula pesto. Yep. It’s true.

7.Picking out recipes. When all else fails, hand your kids a cookbook and some sticky notes and let them pick something that looks good for dinner. It is empowering for a little kid to be able to choose the meal. And you didn’t have to think about what’s for dinner.

I’ll be hiding out in this secret garden today if anyone needs me... #wishthiswasmyyard

School picture day. And it finally feels like fall in #houston

Today is #dayofthegirl , a day created by the UN to celebrate the strength of girls and acknowledge the barriers girls face in all over the world. Yesterday in our #girlscout meeting, we made pins to wear today and we worked thru the @wagggs_world curriculum around International Day of the Girl and gender equality. I can best sum up the girls’ discussion by quoting one of the girls: “Mind blown.” (Imagine this with full 8yo drama quotient and hand motions. It was rich.) 👧🏾👧🏼👧🏽👧🏿👧🏻 I wrote a big, long caption about the importance of this day in a global context but the fact of the matter is that my 8yo daughter, who proudly wore a pin last night to dinner (swipe left), won’t wear her pin to school today because she thinks the boys will make fun of her. “They expect me to like certain things and act a certain way, Mom.” Full stop. 👧🏽👧🏻👧🏾👧🏿👧🏼 I’m angry. And I’m incredibly sad. And I’m sharing that here because real life. 👧🏻👧🏽👧🏿👧🏼👧🏾 I get that kids will be kids and the boys in question certainly don’t have an intent to exclude girls simply because they are girls. Or if they do have that intent it’s because both genders think the other stinks at this age. I get that my daughter’s insecurities are her own, her assumptions about what may happen are her own, and I’m sure I’ve contributed to both by being a loud mouth feminist. But y’all. Our kids - our daughters and our sons - deserve better than this. They deserve better than to continue to live within the confines of worn out stereotypes of gender roles. I’m open to ideas. How are we going to change this? #bethechange

I don’t typically celebrate “wins”. To be clear, it’s not that I object to public acknowledgment of success, just that it’s more my nature to move on to the next thing once (if ever) something is complete. It’s also possible that my idea of a win has always been substantially larger than getting dinner on the table. Hence the parenthetical in the previous sentence. 🌮🥟🥞 Today, however, I want to acknowledge some wins and I want to do so publicly so that those of you reading this who are like me, who have what others call “high expectations” (virgos and type As anyone?), and who beat yourselves up over the incomplete items on the list instead of noticing the things that you actually did (and that probably weren’t even on the list to begin with) - YES ! I'm talking to you! You might possibly recognize yourself. (Also that was certainly a run-on sentence. Let’s move on.) 🏅🏆🎖 Today, I said yes to yoga with a fellow mom who I don’t know well, which was uncomfortable on more than one front. And it turned out to be amazing. Health and well-being win. 🧘🏻‍♀️🧘🏻‍♀️🧘🏻‍♀️ Today, I intended to join in with One Room Challenge for the 5th time. I sat down and wrote a blog post about why I was participating only to find in the writing that I no longer felt the need to participate. So I didn’t. And on top of that, I didn’t feel that the time writing was time wasted. Down with busy for the sake of busy win. 🏡🏡🏡 Today, my son lost his campaign for representative of his third grade classroom. He came home in tears. But we talked, and he went from never trying anything new again to never trying things with voting to maybe trying things with voting in a couple of years. He ended the day in smiles. I’m not going to lie. There may have been an ice cream sandwich involved. Parenting win. ✅✅✅ Today, I got real dinner on the table, with vegetables and everything, for the third day in a row, despite soccer and music lessons and whatever else. And my kids ate it. And we talked while we ate dinner. Normal, right? I’m going with a win. 🥗🍝🍪 So there it is. The little things have big impact. Tell me, if you’ve made it this far, what was your win today? #ryhsyinnercircle

Thirteen years married to this guy today. Pretty damn lucky. #adventureisoutthere